The Broadband Forum has released its latest global broadband and IPTV (Internet TV) statistics for Q1-2009, which were sourced from Point Topic data. The data shows that broadband lines grew by 16.6 million during the first quarter, bringing the worldwide total to a staggering 429.2 million. Happily the UK managed to retain its 6th position in the Top 10 Broadband Countries table.


North America was again a major factor in continued IPTV growth (total subscribers: 4,435,102), with strong increases of more than 15% over the last quarter and a huge 94.2% year-on-year improvement. There are now nearly 4.5 million lines of IPTV across North America. By comparison the largest market - Western Europe - grew to 11,375,200 subscribers, which equates to an annual growth of 45.85%.

In terms of technology, DSL continues to be the most popular broadband access technology, although fiber grew by more than three million lines to reflect a 12.4% share of the market, while wireless showed a healthy proportionate increase of over one million lines to a total of 5.58 million.



The UK looks set to pass the 18m broadband lines milestone before the end of this year, although growth in our market has slowed thanks to general saturation. It is worth pointing out that Point Topic's statistics do not appear to count USB Modem/Data Card/Netbooks using Mobile Broadband subscribers; this might add an extra 2 or 3m to our total (not counting 3G phones).